‘If this guy is elected, you can kiss public schools goodbye’ - The Washington Post

There is no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly.”

With that line from his big education policy speech on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump placed himself firmly in the camp of school “reformers” who want to break up the public education system in America.

Trump declared his intent to use public funds for students to attend private schools and to promote the growth of charter schools, employing the language of Republicans who refuse to call public schools public schools and instead refer to them as “government-run education monopolies.” (Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is a leader in this, often calling public schools “government-run monopolies run by unions.” Let’s ignore the irony of Trump using the same language as Bush, whom Trump mocked during the GOP primaries.)

Trump said he would take $20 billion in federal funding — though he didn’t make clear where he would get it from — to establish block grants that states can use to help children in low-income families enroll at private and charter schools. In a somewhat mixed message, he said that although states would be able to use the money as they saw fit, he would push them to use it for school choice. He didn’t say how he would push.

School choice is one of the central tenets of corporate school reform, which also embraces standardized test-based “accountability” systems and the privatization of America’s public education system, the country’s most important civic institution. Supporters say the public education system is failing and that education should be subject to market forces. Critics say that school choice is taking resources away from traditional public schools, making efforts to improve them more difficult, and that civic institutions can’t properly be run as businesses in part because children aren’t products for sale.

Trump, a consummate showman, made some unusual choices on his mission to promote school choice. For one, he traveled to Ohio to speak at a charter school in a state that has long had one of the country’s most scandal-plagued charter sectors. How scandal-plagued?

In May 2015, theAkron Beacon Journal published the results of an investigation with this as the first paragraph: “No sector — not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals — misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.” Shortly after that, the Plain Dealer ran a story this year that started like this:

Ohio, the charter school world is making fun of you.

Ohio’s $1 billion charter school system was the butt of jokes at a conference for reporters on school choice in Denver late last week, as well as the target of sharp criticism of charter school failures across the state.

The shots came from expected critics like teachers unions, but also from pro-charter voices…